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Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877)
The Wounded Man, 1844–54
Oil on canvas; 32 1/8 x 38 3/8 in. (81.5 x 97.5 cm)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris
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Begun in the mid-1840s, this self-portrait underwent a series of transformations. An X-radiograph of the painting reveals that it was painted over an image of Courbet and a lover, asleep in a sylvan setting, which closely resembles a drawing of the same subject—Country Siesta (Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie, Besançon). Following his separation from Virginie Binet in 1852, Courbet painted over the figure of the woman in this work, obliterating her body with a dark brown blanket, and reinvented his own portrayal as well. No longer a lover lost in the sensual abandon of sleep, he appears as a wounded duelist "in his death throes," as he described this image.
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